Breakfast had just been placed upon the table, and every one save Linda was moving toward it. A little, drooping figure still seated, she seemed very ill that morning, and the great, dark circles about her eyes looked like purple stains on her white face. I crossed directly to her, thus turning my back upon every one else, and leaning over her and thrusting my small package into her hand with a warning pressure of the fingers, I said: “I have brought a fresh handkerchief for you, Miss Linda--do you want it?” The moment she touched the parcel she understood. Her eyes sent one startled glance toward her father--then she looked at me. The white weariness faded all away, and warmly, rosily I saw her love blossom sweetly in her face, while she answered: “Thank you, little sister--yes I want it,” and slipped the handkerchief into the pocket of her gown, just as her father pushed me impatiently aside that he might assist her to her place at table. He instantly noted the color in her face and sharply exclaimed: “What’s this--what’s this! is this a feverish manifestation, at this hour of the day?” And Linda smiled and charged him with “cultivating his imagination, instead of his corn,” and by the time she was in her place the color had faded, the waxen pallor was back upon her face, and the small incident had been safely passed. Late that afternoon Linda was lying on, or perhaps I should say clinging to, the hard and slippery thing they called a sofa--Heaven save the mark! It was long and hard, and smoothly covered with shiny leather. It arched up in its middle over very powerful springs, and the springs and the slipperiness did the trick for every one. You could not snuggle on it to save your life, and if you attempted to be friendly with it and tried to rest your book or fan or smelling bottle beside you--hoop la!--with an intensity of malice known only to the inanimate enemy it would hitch up its back and fire everything off onto the floor well out of your reach--and if you showed any marked annoyance it would fire you after them. There was not a day that it did not shoot Miss Linda’s pillow from under her head, and twice I saw it slide her bodily to the floor. I had found just one thing that could hold on to this slippery fiend, and that was a blanket--but who on earth wanted to lie on a blanket in the summer-time? So there Miss Linda lay on the glassy-surfaced “sofa,” with a chair pushed close up to it to prevent her sliding off, and I on the floor slowly fanning her and hoping she might be asleep, she was so very quiet. But no, she was not sleeping, for presently, without opening her eyes or making the least movement, she whispered: “Little sister, you saved three of us much grief and pain by your caution and your thoughtfulness to-day, and now, dear, I will explain about the picture.”